[Huge Effort Post] Problem and Solution: Re-supplying troops mid-game

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[Illegal_Carrot]

Hello everyone, I would like to share my feelings on a topic that I believe is very important to EiR, and that topic is the resupplying of units and the preservation of troops in-game. It is not the most pressing issue facing the mod at the moment, but it is one that I believe I have found an excellent solution to, as well as an issue that will surely begin to affect the mod more and more as time goes on, if it is not dealt with.

Since its very inception, EiR has been a mod about unit preservation. The ability to maintain troops over the course of multiple battles, and earn veterancy in battle, is the #1 reason to play the mod, and the biggest factor that separates EiR from other CoH mods. It is clear that the dev team and the community, together, have agreed that a player in EiR should value their units. And with the locking of certain key unit abilities behind vet level 1 (Marder Lock Down, Sherman Smoke, Cromwell Flank Speed, etc.) it is clear that the devs still want players to preserve their units, and are doing what they can to encourage such behavior. But it is important to remember that players who choose to sacrifice their units in battle have every right to do so, and their style of play should not be punished at all. Instead of punishing those who sacrifice their units, we should be encouraging players to preserve their units (aka using positive reinforcement, not negative).

The dev team addressed this issue, to some extent, by giving Infantry doctrine (ie, the doctrine with the most need for a way to heal its infantry) the Triage Center, and they have since continued to implement such "means of unit-preservation," with the more recent inclusion of healing units like the ambulance, repair units like the Bergetiger, resupply units like the Munitions Halftrack, and doctrine abilities that have similar effects. It is clear that unit preservation is not only the driving focus of EiR, but also that the use and encouragement of unit-preserving strategies leads to a much better gameplay experience, and that every doctrine and faction needs access to some form of unit-repair and resupply.

If these forms of healing are too exclusive to certain factions or doctrines, then gameplay becomes very awkward, imbalanced, and unfun in many instances. Yet if they are available to every player (as they should be), they must not be too powerful, otherwise gameplay will begin to revolve around it exclusively, as is almost the case currently: the Triage Center, for example, can heal Riflemen from zero to full health in just 20 seconds! Other forms of healing are often too powerful, as well, including vehicle repair abilities, and major problems arise when one player has access to these abilities, but another player simply has no answer to them. If you beat an enemy's unit down to 10% health, you should be able to measure the time that unit is taken out of the fight in minutes, not seconds.

To counteract the negative effects of the exclusivity of certain "means of healing," as well as discourage (but not punish!) the use of suicide-tactics, I would suggest the implementation of two items:

1) A small, but worthwhile, passive regeneration for every infantry unit.

2) A universal healing and re-supply (and possibly even reinforcement) unit available to every player, regardless of faction or doctrine choices.

The passive health regeneration would largely encourage players to preserve low-health units, and use them for secondary tasks (such as building defenses, or defending the back-field), rather than killing them off on suicide missions. Right now, many players have no means of healing their units, or lack the proper incentive to do so. This passive health regen would mean that every player, even those without proper healing units on the field, would have a reason to preserve their troops. It's genuinely pretty absurd that once a squad gets low on health, that it will, by default, always be low on health (and thus, remain useless as a combat unit, and for most other purposes).

Adding in a small passive regen would also reduce the reliance on actual healing units by quite a bit. The ability to heal one's units is a tremendous ability, forcing players to position their units and defenses around what healing units they have, if any. These healing units are usually immobile, or at least require a lock-down to use, and have a small area of affect, which does two things: First, it forces the game to center around these healing units, both geographically and mechanically. Geographically, units on the flank, or otherwise far away from a friendly healing unit, completely miss out on the ability to recover any health, and mechanically, games often become all about who can out-heal their opponent (a Rifleman-spam Infantry company with Triage Centers is the most obvious example of this, while other instances, such as a repair-focused Tank Destroyers company, should not be ignored). Secondly, the exclusivity of these healing units (they're only available under certain conditions, and of a limited number and with a small area of affect on the field), means that they needs to be overpowered, to some extent, in order to be worth purchasing, to make up for their limitations. And so to make up for that fact that they are useless for many of the units on the map, they are overpowered for the units that do have access to them (again, going back to the example of a Triage Center being able to heal a Riflemen squad from zero to full health in 20 just seconds).

If a passive health regeneration were implemented, you would see much less use of suicide tactics in EiR. Rather than running an infantry blob into enemy lines in a suicide attack, for example, the attacking player would be encouraged to slowly peel weakened units away from the fight so that they could heal. You would also see much less suicide back-capping and suicide-scouting as a result, for similar reasons. In addition, you would also see much more dynamic gameplay, as units sent to hold certain sectors or defend flanks could regenerate health, despite being so far away from any healing units, and eventually become battle-worthy again, allowing them to affect the game in new and interesting ways.

I would suggest that every unit recover health at the rate of ¹/_600th of their max health per second, aka it would take 10 minutes to heal a squad from zero to full health. In an actual gameplay setting, most players would probably pull a unit back for about 5 minutes to recover back about half of that unit's health. Having to pull back and preserve a unit for five minutes to recover half its health seems like a reasonable rate.

Now, I would like to move on to my second, and likely much more controversial suggestion: the inclusion of a universal healing and re-supply unit.

As it stands, there are many healing units (and structures, and upgrades, and abilities) in the game, and many munitions and re-supply units, as well. In addition to being unbalanced and often unfun, due to their exclusivity to certain doctrines or factions, they are also largely unbalanced (due to their sheer number and variety), game changing (due simply to how amazing the ability to heal units is), awkward in their use (a Triage Center, for example, is overpowered when an Allied player is able to focus the battle around it, yet useless when there aren't any infantry squads nearby), and difficult to utilize (properly managing a Support Scout Car to heal, a Munitions Halftrack to re-supply troops and increase DPS, and infantry squads to run between the two, while also fighting the enemy, is not a task most players are capable of). It is clear that every player should have some form of healing and resupply, so as to encourage unit preservation and discourage suicide tactics, but the current system and selection of units simply cannot stay. Instead, there needs to be a system that is both relatively simplistic in its use (so that all players have equal access to its benefits), and also better suited to the gameplay of EiR.

For this, I would suggest a Brit Command Truck-like unit, made available to all players, as a mobile forward supply base. It would be mobile, in that it could pack and unpack, and reposition as necessary, yet almost entirely static in its nature, with very long pack-up and un-pack times, and a very slow max speed (to discourage constant repositioning, or getting the unit too close to dangerous situations). Units within a certain distance of the mobile FOB would have increased health regeneration, an increased rate of fire, reduced reload times, etc. Units that touch the FOB would have their abilities immediately brought off of cooldown. (exact details to be worked out at a later time, of course). The point of the unit would not be a front-line combat-enhancer, but as a second-line support unit, to aid with health regeneration and ability cooldown. Ideally, they would be about as common and numerous as mortars: most players take one or two in their company, with three or more being overkill. A player could choose not to take any of these mobile FOBs, and instead spend those resources elsewhere, and still have a perfectly competitive company, but with a noticeable detriment in the form of lacking a healing and resupply unit. An appropriate cost for this unit might be 200MP, 200Mu, 100Fu, and 4 pop (again, exact details to be worked out later).

Why not stick with the healing and munitions units currently in the game? Firstly, there are simply too many units to properly and effectively balance. There are all sorts of units, and buildings, and abilities, and items, and vehicles that fit into this category, and a more universal approach is necessary here. While it is certainly is very "interesting" and "fluffy" for each doctrine to have its own means of healing and resupplying their units, it quickly becomes a huge balance issue to balance all of these different units, especially considering the fact that it is so much more difficult to balance non-combat support units already. And given all the balance issues that face the mod currently, the last thing the game needs is yet another slew of units that vary so greatly, and have to be balanced individually. Besides, it's makes perfect sense for every faction in EiR to load up a large truck with supplies, and utilize it as a forward supply base. Secondly, many of the available healing units have so many caveats to them that they seem more like gimmicks, than actual worthwhile purchases. The Triage Center and CCS, for example, become useless as soon as the battle is not longer going on around them. They are noticeably more powerful on smaller maps, like Neunen, and noticeably less powerful on larger maps, like Schindjel. A mobile FOB would fix this by being able to reposition, albeit slowly, and always stay relevant to the game by being near the front. On the other end of the spectrum, healing cars like the Support Scout Car and Ambulance are able to keep near the front, but are far too vulnerable to enemy fire. If the enemy rushes you with bazooka infantry blobs, or M10s, it's a virtual guarantee that your healing car units are going to die. Similarly, any kind of artillery strike has a huge chance to take them out. A mobile FOB would solve this by being a slightly beefier unit (as would be fitting for its increased cost, I'm thinking ~500HP with Halftrack armor?) that you could actually mount a defense around, thus giving factions like PE a little more staying power when on the defensive. Essentially, the mobile FOB would be a much more balanced, less gimmicky unit than what is available currently. Finally, a mobile FOB would be a much more user-friendly unit than anything else that is currently available, while being a little more forgiving and newbie-friendly, and with a lower skill cap than most of the other options currently available, This is especially important, as a lower skill cap balances the playing field for all players, and non-combat support units are not where a player should be focusing their attention or micro.

I feel like I've said more than enough already to convince some of you, or at least get a conversation on the topic going. I'd really like to discuss what I've written here before moving on to tangential topics, but I will say this: I would like to see some means of unit reinforcement added to EiR, as well. Similar to a passive health regen, the ability to reinforce some units would encourage players to preserve their units, rather than suicide them. Instead of suicide-scouting with a one-man Rifle squad, a player would more greatly benefit from pulling that unit back, reinforcing it once or twice, and using it instead to scout/defend a flank. Pioneers and Engineers would no longer be quite so hilariously vulnerable to focus fire and snipers. Armored doctrine's Combat Engineers might actually be worthwhile if you could reinforce them once or twice between firefights., etc.

So there we go, the first of many effort-posts I'll be making about the gameplay of EiR. I've put a lot of thought and effort into this, so I hope that everyone will show it the respect and consideration it deserves. Thank you all.

[CrazyWR]

Well, that was certainly a lot of text.  Lets try to start from the top and go from there, since you deserve a response in full after typing all that.

1) I am curious how you plan to implement all this healing without allowing units to regain full squad numbers.  If you propose to allow units to regain full health entirely via healing, do you also mean they would eventually regain squad members as well sort of like field dressing for infantry doc, or would this be functioning like vet1 for Wehr, which provides healing slowly, but does not revive squad members?

2) Why not make vet1 for all units equal to the vet1 for Wehr, thus units are encouraged to survive a bit and yet so is unit preservation?


Moving on to your second suggestion, I'm not sure I like what I'm reading in a few parts here.

1) Instant cooldown here reminds me of the PE Vcoh ability of when you drive near their HQ with an ATHT, allowing treadbreaker to instantly cycle back to 0, along with whatever other abilities the units near it may have.  Anything that increases the frequency of treadbreaker seems like a bad thing, I think we have that actually fairly valued at the moment.  Removing current c/d on infantry-based abilities like SF or grenades or stickies seems fine, but not officer offmaps or treadbreakers...so I think it will be a delicate balance what the FOB would fix.

2) I realllllllllly don't like having the FOB with so much health.  Someone spamming rifles as Americans or Grens with Blitz, or Tommies won't be buying many tanks, and thus would have plenty of fuel to spend on FOB's.  Buying 5-6 of these(as you see some rifle spammers do with triages, or pg spammers do with support scout cars) and moving them up to the front of the battle will mean the enemy HAS to focus fire on them immediately, which means all the units around them are going to rape whatever shows up at the front for the foreseeable future, especially if the enemy can find a shotblocker to position it behind, but still allow it to be up with the troops.  I would suggest using the deuce transport truck for this role, allowing small arms fire to hurt it, and only giving it something like 300 health instead of 500.  It should be fragile along with expensive so that it won't tempt people to spam them to use at the front.

3) Reinforcement in game would lead to more focus fire, not less.  If you think the enemy squad has a chance of coming back if you don't kill it entirely right then and there, then you would be sure to finish each and every squad off entirely  before moving to the next one.  Have you seen in OMG where they have the retreat to captain button enabled?  Killing off entire Brit squads(or the captain, obviously, although people tend to have more than one) is absolutely essential there, and also incredibly difficult.  I'm not sure this is a route we can go down without a LOT of careful consideration. 


All in all, these suggestions seem to move the mod a bit back towards VCOH mechanics.  I'm certainly not opposed to it, as the part of VCOH most people here dislike is the base building and resource management(or thats what I thought), but I am not sure this is a direction people will approve of, even if they are fairly well thought out changes.  I'm entirely in favor of universal healing, but I'm a bit unsure on the FOB.

[GrayWolf]

tl;dr

I just read this :

To counteract the negative effects of the exclusivity of certain "means of healing," as well as discourage (but not punish!) the use of suicide-tactics, I would suggest the implementation of two items:

1) A small, but worthwhile, passive regeneration for every infantry unit.

2) A universal healing and re-supply (and possibly even reinforcement) unit available to every player, regardless of faction or doctrine choices.

And I must say : NO

[TheArea]

Didit realize carrot still played.

[CrazyWR]

tl;dr

I just read this :And I must say : NO

why even bother to post?

[Illegal_Carrot]

or would this be functioning like vet1 for Wehr, which provides healing slowly, but does not revive squad members?

Exactly. Individual members of a squad would slowly regenerate health, but members of the squad wouldn't come back to life or anything. So if you have a squad with a few member still alive, but down to 5% health, you have a reason to hold them back and let them heal up, rather than just suicide them at the enemy.

2) Why not make vet1 for all units equal to the vet1 for Wehr, thus units are encouraged to survive a bit and yet so is unit preservation?

Passive health regen should be available to all units, even non-vetted units. Passive health regen is something that's sorely missing from EiR, a mod that's so heavily focused on unit preservation. The more stuff you lock away behind vet 1, the more you punish people who don't have vet. You should always encourage players to preserve their units, but never punish them for not doing so.

1) Instant cooldown here reminds me of the PE Vcoh ability of when you drive near their HQ with an ATHT, allowing treadbreaker to instantly cycle back to 0, along with whatever other abilities the units near it may have.  Anything that increases the frequency of treadbreaker seems like a bad thing, I think we have that actually fairly valued at the moment.  Removing current c/d on infantry-based abilities like SF or grenades or stickies seems fine, but not officer offmaps or treadbreakers...so I think it will be a delicate balance what the FOB would fix.

The ability cooldown reduction would work on mainline infantry abilities, like Suppression Fire, Grenades, Panzerfuasts, etc., but certainly not on stuff like officer off-maps, or any vehicle abilities.

2) I realllllllllly don't like having the FOB with so much health.

The exact specifics of the FOB could be worked out a bit later; it doesn't have to have 500HP or anything, that just seemed like a good place to start, to me. Still, given its thin armor and everything, it needs enough HP to survive an arty barrage or two. Honestly, with how weak they are, and how long it would take to pack them up, they'd be sure to die if the enemy was able to get a dedicated AT weapon aimed at them. The large HP pool would just be for a little bit of surviveability against arty, light vehicles, panzerfausts/sticky bombs, etc. Right now the Support Scout Car, Ambulance, Munitions Halftrack, etc. all die in two hits to pretty much any weapon (2 ATG hits, 2 sticky bombs, 2 zooks, etc. With how absurdly little HP they have, you have hardly any margin of error when using them, and often times you'll lose them to things that you can't even do anything about, and that's an issue that needs to be addressed if we ever expect newbies or non-pro players to use such support units with any effectiveness, especially when playing paper-thin PE.

3) Reinforcement in game would lead to more focus fire, not less.

But people already know to focus fire on weaker squads, like Engis or Pios, especially if those units have a flame thrower. It's not like they can focus fire these units any harder than they already do. But by giving these units a means of reinforcing themselves, you'd finally give Flame Pios a battlefield usefulness and life expectancy of more than 10 seconds.

Also, here's my train of logic, if it helps you understand any better:

1. People should preserve their units in EiR, because it leads to a better gameplay experience
2. To accomplish this, people should be encouraged to preserve their units (but people who choose to suicide their units should not be punished for doing so!)
3. The best, easiest, and most balanced way to accomplish this is to give every player the ability for both passive and active unit recovery.
3.1 The best, easiest, and most balanced way to implement passive health regen would be to give all squads a passive health regen, at a reasonable rate.
3.2 The best, easiest, and most balanced way to implement active health regen would be to give all players a unit that can heal their troops.
3.2.1 The current crop of healing units, vehicles, buildings, and abilities are fucked and unbalanced. It'd be best to just implement a universal healing unit for all players that's less gimmicky and more balanced than the current selection of healing units.

[GrayWolf]

Wehr have a medic kit. Ultra heal and fast counter attack. I don't like the idea sorry. If you want healing, you should invest your resources.